Chapter 13: In the Mount With God

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
THE event proved that we were not fax out in our calculation. We could not have been sleeping more than half an hour when Miss Gates was awakened by the hue and cry of the Boxers in full pursuit. Quickly rousing us, she bade us be prepared for the emergency of discovery or further flight.
It was a sudden recall indeed to the realm of sad reality. Judging from the noise, the men had done what they said, and had returned with a strong reinforcement—to find the bird flown. Baulked of their prey, they were now scouring the country; and unless our ears were deceived, we might hope for no mercy if they succeeded in the search. What if the deeper darkness of our hiding place, instead now of being our protection, should prove the occasion of our discovery! for it might well furnish to our pursuers the same reason for their search that it had furnished to us for our concealment. The sounds came near enough to lead us to fear that it was so in very deed. But they hurried on and passed by; and we were left with the deep consciousness that we had been covered by the Hand of God.
Again we lifted our hearts in praise to our Deliverer, and sought guidance in prayer. Miss Gates’ conviction was that we could not long escape detection where we were, and that in any case it would be needful to find another hiding place against the morning light. But where? To attempt to reach Uang-fang now was out of the question, with pursuers on the track; and the woodland cover around, whatever it might be worth at night, would certainly fail to suffice us by day. Our only chance seemed to hang upon a suggestion of Sheng-min’s. There was a lonesome cave in the locality known to him; to this he would try and pilot us, if we would take the risk.
Short as it was, the snatch of sleep so graciously given had much refreshed us; and realizing that the call to move was of God, we knew that, being in His will, we could count upon the sufficiency of His grace for all our need, whether of strength for weakness or whatsoever else. So committing ourselves and our perilous way into His Hand, we took the sleeping little ones in our arms once more, and “went out” from our hiding place, “not knowing whither we went.”
And now the providential mercy of our God met us at the outset in a, remarkable way. Our main anxiety hitherto had been the almost preternatural brilliancy of the moon. It was so still. The risks of breaking cover were such that it almost amounted to courting re-capture. And yet we were all of one mind in the conviction that it was God’s way for us now. As we passed out from the deep shadows of the firs into the peril of that remorseless glare (I can call it nothing else), I feared; and my heart’s cry went up to God to cover us. In almost less time than it takes to write it, the dread light was quenched beneath a rolling sea of cloud; nor did it appear again until we were in the place to which He would bring us. So dark indeed did it become, that at times we had the greatest difficulty in keeping together.
How can I describe that weird and awful midnight tramp? We kept to the fields, away from beaten tracks and haunts of men, seeking as far as possible the concealment of grove and coppice. Now we were climbing walls of ragged stone; now dropping at a guess to lower levels. Anon we were plodding over plowed fields or struggling with the stunted undergrowth. Once my dear wife sank almost to her knees in a bank of soft soil, and while seeking to extricate herself lost both her shoes; in recovering which I also was snared; while the rest had gone on into the darkness—(we were walking in single file)—and we dared not call aloud to them to stay. Often our feet had well-nigh slipped on treacherous ridges or into unsuspected holes. And how often we stumbled almost to a fall! But Thy mercy, O Lord, held us up.
He Who was keeping our feet was also guiding our way. Sometimes it was so dark that I could scarcely see my wife’s form, though she was but a couple of yards in front of me. More than once I lost sight of the rest altogether, to my terror. But beyond all this, Sheng-min found that in the dim uncertainties of night, he had lost his bearings, and the hope of reaching the cave was gone.
What was to be done now He knew of nothing else than to seek the covert of some disused temple, such as are constantly to be met with in isolated places. Slowly and cautiously we crept on in the hope of finding such a refuge, pausing continually to listen. At length the dark outline of a rural shrine stood out close before us. Warning us on no account to leave the cover of the grove and to await his return, the boy went warily forward to reconnoiter the building. The report he brought back was not only not reassuring, it was alarming. The temple was full of men, to judge from voices he heard issuing from within—in all likelihood the very men who were hunting our lives. So, turning our steps back again, we made haste to flee—whither, we knew not.
Yet He knew—He in Whose Hand our breath is, and Whose are all our ways. I remember so well the feeling of absolute helplessness that came over me Knowledge we had none; and the little strength remaining to us was fast giving out. And I just said; “‘The Lord is my Shepherd’—Lord, shepherd us now, for we have no strength to go on. ‘He leadeth me’—Lord, lead us now; for we know not which way to turn. In our utter ignorance, be Thou our wisdom. In our utter weakness, be Thou our strength; for the glory of Thy Holy Name.”
Then we remembered that there was one resource still open to us—the hills. But, benighted wanderers that we were, how should we find our way thither?
We had succeeded in getting well away from the direction of the temple, and were now cautiously threading a coppice, when the shouts of our pursuers again startled the silence, and made our hearts stand still. Evidently, they were making in our direction; for the dreadful sounds were growing nearer and more distinct. We stopped dead where we were, and stood rooted to the spot, not daring to move hand or foot. Then, just when it seemed that they were about to break upon us, the direction of the cries suddenly changed, and we knew that they had passed on to another track.
Our position had now become extremely critical, and we realized how easily the smallest indiscretion might betray us. Happily, the darling children were given over to heavy sleep, and past all thoughts of crying out—a blessing compared with which the exaggerated deadness of their dead weight was to us who carried them a trifle. We waited until we were satisfied that the sounds were sufficiently distant, and all immediately around us quiet as before; and then, with our heart fixed on God, we crept forward again. At no great distance the cover was broken by a gully cutting the coppice. Just as we reached it, we heard a roar as of riot, and the baying of dogs. Then a lurid light shot up into the darkness. The sky glowed with the red glare of palpitating flame, waxing fiercer and fiercer, and outlining the bolder features of the landscape. Wonderfully did our God make this to work for our good. For there, against the ruddy background of the sky, standing high before us, we saw—the mountain we were seeking!
Patiently we waited till the glare had fallen. Then, swiftly crossing the gully, we entered the coppice on the far side, and ere long we found ourselves where we had prayed to be—on the mountain slope, working towards the summit.
The glow had faded from the sky, and darkness covered us once more. Just at the needed time; for the hill side was innocent of anything that might serve to screen us. Had the moon unveiled or the flames revived, we could not have escaped detection as we moved upon the face of that open expanse. But our God was with us to give us an expected end; and the darkness that hid us was the covering of His Presence. Slowly and painfully we made the ascent. It seemed, in the particular circumstances, the counterpart of the words which came continually to mind—
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil and pain;
and our stricken hearts took up the refrain, as they traveled on in thought to the spiritual reality—
O God, to us Thy grace be given
To follow in their train!
With feelings of devout thankfulness the summit was reached at last. It was circular in form, with a diameter of about fourteen or fifteen feet, absolutely bare of trees, and very exposed. As a hiding place in the daytime it would have been of no value but for a remarkable feature. The cone was indented in such a way as to form a basin, of sufficient depth to admit of our sitting (or even standing) in it without being seen, provided we kept away from the margin. Into this basin we now crept—shall I ever forget how thankfully!—with a deep realization of the provision and safe-keeping of our Shepherd Lord. A few minutes sufficed to make the needed preparations for a short night’s rest—the unearthing of several large stones; and with these for our pillows we lay down to sleep, in the assurance that He Who had been so marvelously about our path was also about our bed.
The Lu-an district forms a plateau with an elevation of some three thousand feet above the sea level; and on the summit of that hill, in our condition of semi-nakedness, we tasted the inner meaning of the dry geographical fact. I never suffered from cold, before or since, as I did that, night. We huddled together as close as we could to keep in the vital heat, with the little ones wedged in between, doing our best each one to make our single garment serve the purpose of coverlet for them as well as coat for ourselves. But in vain. For myself, I know my teeth never stopped rattling all the night through, try as I might to prevent it.
Sleep there was none for any of us, save the children. The clouds drifted from before the moon, leaving us exposed to the full power of its beams—exposed, therefore, to the proving of the promise, “The moon shall not smite thee by night.” Far down, away in the distance, we heard the hoarse shouts of our pursuers as they pressed the chase, almost till break of day. And then a sweet spell of restful stillness, relieved of all unquiet alarms, and only the consciousness of the shadowing of Jehovah’s wings.
I come now to one of the most solemn crises in the history, not of this solemn period only, but of my whole life. Among the many spots which I can look back upon as “holy ground,” I might find it difficult to say which stands out before me as pre-eminently so. And yet the dealings of the Lord with us, alone on the mountain top, were so peculiarly distinct, so definite and searching, that it would almost seem as if the title must rest there. Or should I say that, if other places were “holy ground,” this was “most holy,” standing out in my experience amidst all the other manifestations of Divine grace, as Mount Moriah must have stood out before Abraham and Isaac, or the Mount of Transfiguration before the three disciples. In very truth it was to each one of us three “the mount of the Lord” in which “He was seen” — “the holy mount” where we “were with him”; and by a striking coincidence of His pleasure, the day was His own day—Sunday, July 8.
The sunrise was one of glorious splendor. As the huge disc of fiery red showed above the horizon, its color seemed prophetic of what the day should bring forth for us of “fiery trial.” Not a cloud flocked the sky as, higher and higher, it rose into the azure.
After the bitter cold of the night, the genial warmth of its early rays was very comforting. But ere long, as its power increased, it became a source of grave anxiety and distress. I have already indicated that the summit was wholly destitute of tree life, or of covert of any kind. In the hollow where we lay, the coarse, burnt-up turf boasted of nothing beyond a plant or two of the stunted date shrub.
With no “blinds” between them and the bright morning light, the dear little ones were awakened all too early. We dared not stir from the two positions of lying or sitting—(indeed, we had no inclination to, even had we dared)—nor durst we speak in tones other than just above a whisper; and, from a child’s point of view, such an outlook was not over cheerful. But the trial that was to test us was to test them, too, and to bring out in them qualities of character that we had no idea of previously. Sweet little darlings!—how readily they fell in with our every wish! Not a murmur not even a question, after we had given the reason why. Just the patient sitting there, or crawling a yard of two now and again, and not a sound above the regulation whisper.
After uniting together in prayer we began to think of breakfast; or, shall I say, to be forcibly reminded of it from within? For what we had to “think of” was not breakfast, but the lack of it. It was just forty-two hours since anything solid had passed our lips (Friday, at noon); and here we were, fugitives in hiding, with nothing to sustain us, and no hope of getting anything. It was wonderful how we were kept from the suffering of excessive pangs of hunger. I felt the gnawings, certainly, but not the pangs; and I believe that we could all testify to the same experience. Well, we made the best of our circumstances, and realizing that the eye of our God was upon us, according to the word. “Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him,” we were sure) that He would feed us with food convenient for us. If He gave us nothing but the grass around us to eat, He could so order it that the grass should sustain us. So the dear children, happy in having something to do, began to see what delicacies they could find for “breakfast” among the weeds. To their delight they were able to bring of several kinds, which they doled out as “meat,” with the leaves of the date shrub for “bread.” Then lifting our hearts in thanksgiving to our Father, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and asking His blessing upon what He had graciously given in our extremity, we made our herbal meal; for is it not written, “In everything give thanks. Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God”? I learned then, as never before, the true blessedness of “saying grace.” The dry, uncooked weeds and leaves were truly “the bread of affliction”; but, being “sanctified by the Word of God and prayer,” and “received with thanksgiving they were found to be the bread of blessing.”
By seven o’clock the power of the sun was becoming distinctly perceptible; and, as it increased in intensity, we began to realize what it meant to be bareheaded. The gauze combinations, which formed the dear children’s only covering, left their arms wholly exposed from the shoulder, and their legs from the middle of the thigh. It was not long before the skin, so sensitive in a child, was burning red as from a scald.
As the moisture of the skin dried, so also did that of the tongue, and ere long a great thirst was upon us. The trial of hunger was as nothing compared with this, for which there was no assuagement of any sort at hand. The little ones’ plaint, “I am so thirsty; please give me something to drink,” soon became a piteous cry, “O father, dear father! do give me water. Mother darling, won’t you give me water?” We sought to hush them tenderly, for they could not now refrain from crying aloud in their distress, and we knew that this would, in all probability, lead to our discovery.
“Don’t cry, darlings. We will ask God to send us water, and we will be patient till He does.”
The simple laying of our deep need before our Father comforted them; and it was touching to see how heroically they wiped their eyes, and set themselves to “try and be good.” We strove to divert their thoughts from their distress in various ways; but presently the piteous cry broke out again.
“Darling little pets, you mustn’t cry out loud, or eke the naughty men who took our things will find us, and take us away. God knows how thirsty we all are, and He will help us to bear it, till He sends the water.”
Again the earnest effort to contain, as they sought to amuse themselves with grass and soil; and again at length the pleading cry, “Oh, do, do give me water; just one drop!” as they clung about us with their loving ways and tender endearments. Seeing how much it affected my dear wife, I said to them,
“Don’t you think we would give you water, darlings, if we could? But you see we can’t; and you see how very, very sad it makes sweet mother to hear you crying so. You surely won’t go on making her sad, will you?”
Once more the resolute brushing away of the tears, as they set themselves to please us in this. But as the time went on, our precious little Hope was unable to control herself. Her involuntary wail, “Father! Mother! water, water!” —continued without intermittence as long as she was able to articulate—tore our very heart-strings. As for Hedley, I never saw (nor ever expect to see) a finer example of Spartan endurance. When he realized how sad the sounds of his distress made his mother, the dear little chap (not five years old) set himself determinedly, for her sake, to absolute silence. There at her side he sat without so much as a murmur or a groan passing his lips. For hours, through all that burning heat, with his mouth parched and his limbs scorched, he sat quietly on, resolutely toying with the grass, a very miracle of suffering self-control. Some days afterward, I was asking him a few questions about that particular time, and amongst others, this: “Why did you keep so quiet, when all the time you wanted water as badly as Hope did?” His answer came so naturally and simply: “I saw how sad it made darling mother to see me cry, and I asked God to help me not to cry once more till the water came.” Truly out of the mouth of babes Thou hast perfected praise!
At length we could bear the sight of our little ones’ sufferings no longer, and we sent Sheng-min to the edge of the ring to survey the country. But the news that he had sighted a goodly rivulet about three li from the foot of the hill seemed only to mock our grief. How was it possible for us to get the longed-for draft? To leave our hiding place was death.
To dispatch the boy was to run a risk of losing him that we hardly dared contemplate. And yet our extremity was fast passing to a crisis, and could only have one issue at last. So we decided to send him, in reliance upon the guiding and keeping grace of God; and forth he went, with the promise to hasten his return.
With mixed feelings—I may almost say misgiving—we watched him disappear over the rim. From the human standpoint, all our hopes, even of life itself, centered in him. The temporary separation, at the time we were carried out to die, had made us realize what it was to lose him from our side; and the risks were such that we could not count upon his return as in any sense a foregone conclusion. As it was, we were happy in having him actually with us: could it be other than mad folly to be deliberately sending him from us? The fact that we were brought to do it furnishes perhaps the most striking comment I could make upon the straits to which we were reduced.
And now, with our devoted servant gone, a sense of loneliness came over us which searched the very depths of our being. It was too subtle to be accounted for merely by the outward loss; for we were trustfully expecting to see him again, and shortly. The dear lad’s departure may have been the occasion of it, but it was not the cause. That was to be found in “the power of darkness.” The hour had come which was to be peculiarly the hour of our temptation.
Under the pressure of hunger, thirst, and burning heat, my dear wife began to show signs of exhaustion, which made me apprehensive, to say the least. Pitilessly the sun poured down its rays of fire. We cried to God, but it seemed as though He heard not. No clouds gathered at His command, as yester-night; no “gourd came up over” us, “to deliver us from our evil case.” The heavens were brass over our heads, and brass they remained.
At this juncture Miss Gates and I conceived the idea of improvising some slight shelter for her and the children by means of our two garments. Slipping them off and holding the inner edges together, we stood side by side, with the screen drawn up over the shoulders to the level of the head, varying our position with the position of the sun. With the alleviation thus afforded, slender though it was, my dear one was not a little comforted, and strengthened to hold on.
As the sun mounted towards the zenith, darkness gathered over my soul. I think we were each one conscious of the same experience, to a greater or less degree. It was not difficult to believe that Satan had been desiring to have us, that he might sift us as wheat. That hallowed consciousness of our Lord’s near Presence, which had hitherto solaced us and given us power to endure, was now withdrawn; and the language of our hearth (if I may dare to speak for my companions in tribulation as for myself) was, “O that I knew where I might find Him!” I understood, as never before, why Moses so earnestly pleaded for the Presence— “If Thy Presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.” To be destitute of the Presence of Jehovah, my Strength and my Redeemer, in the hour of sore temptation; to be no longer conscious of the light of His countenance; to realize, instead, only the awful nearness of “spiritual hosts of wickedness” ; and to see our adversary the devil coming in the terror of his power as a roaring lion to devour us—!
And all the while our Lord was near, “in His love and in His pity,” though for the time being He willed, for His own great Name’s sake, that our eyes should be holden that we should not know Him. “In all our affliction He was afflicted;” and He was only waiting for the moment when the Wicked One should have finished all his temptation, and the Angel of His Presence would come and minister to us as of old. There were many days of “hardness” yet before us; and the trying of our faith was necessary to work in us “the patience of Christ,” by which alone we should be able to “endure” it, as “good soldiers of Jesus Christ.”
But there was another aspect, too. We were to be disciplined, not merely as soldiers, but also as “sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.” Judgment is to begin at the house of God; and this was nothing else than God our Father bringing us under His mighty hand, even as He did His own beloved Son. As He called Him to learn obedience by the things which He suffered, so also was He calling us to the same lesson. “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” “Ye shall indeed drink of My cup.”
Higher and higher rose the sun into the heavens, and Sheng-min was not back. Narrower and narrower grew the shadow thrown by the slender screen and soon there would be no shadow at all. The children were barely covered by it now; but they seemed past noticing anything. Hedley sat vacantly toying with the grass, while poor little Hope was rocking herself deliriously to the monotonous moan— “Water, water! Oh, dear mother, give me water!” Even the oft repeated assurance that Sheng-min would soon be back, and then they should have as much water as they wanted, seemed lost upon them. A distressing phase of the situation was that with the increasing thirst, the saliva in the mouth turned to a viscous consistency, which we began to find the greatest difficulty in getting rid of. If water did not arrive soon, articulation would become impossible, for even now it was often difficult to disengage the tongue from the palate.
And now the sun was riding directly over our heads, and the last hope of shade was taken away. “A Man shall be as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a rock in a weary land.” Had He not said it? Would He not fulfill the word to us in our extremity? Were we not “in a dry place,” and “in a weary land”?
“When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” Were not we “poor and needy, seeking water”? Was not our “tongue failing for thirst”? And again our hearts’ cry rose up to Him: but He answered us not a word.
In that hour all His waves and His billows seemed to go over me. As the sun poured its fiery heat upon us from above, the Wicked One hurled his fiery darts at us from beneath. How many times I threw back to him the challenge, “Who is he that condemneth! It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us. He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things! Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” How often I fell back upon the word, “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” Again and again did I give him my Lord’s own declaration, “Himself hath said, I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee.” And over and over I said to the Accuser, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
I would fain draw a veil over the solemn sequel. May He strengthen me to show forth just so much as He directs of His own marvelous works, to His own glory!
The Enemy’s answer to all this was the collapse of my beloved Flora. She too had known the bitterness of those hours of darkness; but the language of her unwavering faith had been, “My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able. He faileth not.” Indeed, the sight of her own steadfast endurance, and the sweet unmurmuring resignation of her spirit to the will of God, as “that good and acceptable and perfect will” which was all her delight, had been from the first a channel of Divine strength to me in seasons of special weakness. What it was to me on the mountain top, during those hours of fierce temptation from within and from without, none but God can ever know. And now she lay prostrate before me, overborne by physical weakness, and deeply troubled in soul. As I watched her panting and gasping for breath, with no power to alleviate her suffering beyond supporting her head, it seemed as though I heard the serpent’s hiss, “Yea, hath God said? Where are His promised mercies and loving-kindnesses now? Has He not forgotten to be gracious?” The cruel taunt was winged to the heart of my beloved, too; and in an agony of soul she cried out from the deep darkness, “Oh, God has forsaken us! It can only be that we are not in His will, or He would surely never have suffered us to come to this.” Her distress, physically, was such that I felt sure she was dying; but it was as nothing to the trouble of her soul.
Now indeed it seemed as if the Enemy’s triumph was assured. The cup of sorrow was over-full; and conscious that this was the “scourging” of the Lord, I was dumb under His rebuke. My heart was utterly broken before Him.
But “when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” The moment of our deliverance was at hand; and we were about to know what it was to “overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of our testimony.”
Scarcely had the words of anguish passed my precious one’s lips than God put into Miss Gates’ mouth the most wonderful song of praise I have ever heard. Kneeling by the side of her prostrate sister and holding her hand, she poured forth passage after passage, promise after promise, from the Word, exalting His Name, declaring His faithfulness, and proving His unchanging and unchangeable love, sworn to us in the everlasting Covenant and sealed to us in the Blood of His own beloved Son. Never shall I forget the music of that heavenly utterance. It was as if heaven were open above us, and the strains of the harps of God were being borne to us from glory. My beloved Flora drank it in, oh, how eagerly!—with the avidity of a soul athirst for God, the living God. Together we drank “out of the wells of salvation” —with what joy I cannot express—deep drafts of the pure river of water of life, flowing freely to us now from the throne of God and of the Lamb. The time had come at last for Him to reveal Himself to us. Our eyes were opened, and we knew Him; and the word of His promise was fulfilled to the letter, “A Man shall be as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a rock in a weary land.”
Instantly the darkness was past and the true light was shining again. The heavenly expression in her countenance of joy unspeakable and full of glory, where but a moment before it had been one of unspeakable anguish and distress, was an evident token of what God had wrought. I see her now as she looked when, with the tears coursing down her cheeks she said, “Oh, I will never, never doubt Him again.” And I may add here that from that moment her glorious faith never wavered for an instant, but went from strength to strength through conflict after conflict, till she appeared before God in the heavenly Zion above.
Then together we repeated right through—with parched lips and stammering tongues, but with hearts that had tasted of the wine of heaven—the beautiful hymn, so true to our experience:
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary, rest.
Dear Name the Rock on which I build,
My Shield and Hiding-place,
My never-failing Treasury, filled
With boundless stores of grace.
Jesus, my Shepherd, Brother, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest, and King;
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.
Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought;
But when I see Thee as Thou art,
I’ll praise Thee as I ought.
Till then, I would Thy love proclaim
With every fleeting breath;
And may the music of Thy Name
Refresh my soul in death.

The effect of this divine cordial upon my dear wife physically was nothing short of miraculous. From an apparently dying condition she suddenly revived, and sat up with a restored vigor which amazed me. It was not merely a measure of revival from the extremity of collapse, but it was the incoming of a vital power quickening her for fresh activities. Indeed, it was to us all a literal manifestation of the truth of the word to which her faith had so resolutely clung, “My strength and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.”
By this visitation of God’s grace, our hearts were encouraged to wait for His deliverance from a situation which was still gravely critical. It was past noon, and there was not a sign of Sheng-min. The sun’s blaze was fiercer than ever; and the sensation of thirst was becoming well-nigh intolerable. Not only so: the power to articulate clearly was fast going from us Indeed, we had the greatest difficulty in making ourselves understood; and I saw that very soon it would be no longer possible to communicate with each other by speech. As I struggled to force out the syllables, I understood the meaning of the expression, “My tongue cleaveth to my jaws.” Darling little Hope’s moan was reduced to an indistinguishable sound, as she vainly strove to frame the word “water.”
The situation, however, reached a climax when Miss Gates, who had been the chosen instrument in God’s hand of my dear wife’s restoration, suddenly fell to the ground and swooned away. It seemed as if it were a last revengeful thrust from our retreating foe, to cover the shame of his defeat (Luke 9:42); and his malice must needs be directed against the one who had led the victorious attack.
It was a new and critical emergency, in the presence of which all the old helplessness came over me. As my dear wife and I were pleading with God for her recovery I heard a word behind me as distinctly as if it were spoken in my ear— “Up, get thee down and tarry not.” I said to my wife, “Come, darling, we must gather up what strength remains to us and go down to the water. It is not the will of God that we should remain here any longer.” Then, taking Miss Gates by the arm, I bent over her and said, “Dear sister, we must be going without delay. In the Name of the Lord Jesus, get up.” In a moment consciousness was restored, and she rose up with strength renewed from on high.
With such a confirmation that the thing was of God, and in the assurance that the Lord our God, He it was Who was going before us, we left our hiding place, and once more adventured ourselves into the open. There below us, away in the not-far distance, was the thin streak of silver glancing in the sunlight—the “still waters” to which our Shepherd-Lord was leading us at last. What that sight was to our longing eyes I can never tell—the joy of pointing it out to the darling children, and of seeing the faintest smile dawn over the sad, suffering little features!
Slowly and painfully we took our way down, making use of such cover as we could find on the lower slopes; down, to the plowed fields below, and across them in as direct a line as the ground would admit of; down, to the lowest level; and then, by the shortest cut we could make, to the water’s side. Regardless now of whether we were seen or not, we fairly ran, not to the river, but into it. Oh, the bliss of giving our precious little darlings the first draft, as we filled our hand and put it to their swollen lips! But the process was all too slow to satisfy the urgent need. Wading into mid-stream and putting our mouth to the surface, we drank and drank till the craving was satisfied. We scarcely noticed that the thin silver streak of the distant view was in reality nearer the color of brass (or copper) than silver; for the water was heavily charged with yellow silt, the consistency of which was forcibly impressed upon us by the fact that, after drinking, our tongue and palate were coated with a thick layer of mud! However, that was a minor consideration now. I can only say that, to me, those drafts could not have been more delicious if they had been the purest well water. Under the burning sun we dared to sit in the cool shallows for a few moments longer, laving hands and face. Then with hearts full of gratitude to our Father for so graciously supplying our need, we sought a place where we could lie down unobserved.
Not far from the margin of the stream there was a graveyard, similar to the one we had hidden in the night before. Dark yew trees were there, affording grateful shade; and high grass-grown mounds, amongst which we might hope to screen ourselves. It being a solitary place, and the time of day that known as “shang-wu” —the period of rest when few are about in the hot season—we hoped and believed our sanctuary would not be noticed, or our privacy invaded, for an hour or two at least. But the events of an hour hence belonged, not to us, but to Him Who was guiding us with His eye upon us; and we could afford to leave them in His hands without carefulness.
Once more a heathen burial ground was to be the spot that should enshrine “the memory of Thy great goodness.” What the shelter of that delicious shade meant to us, after being exposed for seven hours at least to the undimmed blaze and sweltering heat of a midsummer sun, no one can imagine. In the waters before us and the shade above us we found the counterpart on the physical side of the precious promise given us in the mount, and already so richly fulfilled on the spiritual side “A Man shall be as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a rock in a weary land.” According to His word, He had not failed us: but He had done to us as He said— “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.”
Not least among the wonders of that memorable day was our miraculous preservation from sunstroke. Those who have spent a summer in China will be able to appreciate the nature of the fact that “the sun did not smite us by day,” under conditions where, humanly speaking, a few minutes would suffice to do even fatal work. That we suffered terribly under its power only proves the marvel. The skin peeled from our faces, and the dear children’s arms, from the shoulder to the elbow, were one huge blister. But the sun had no power to hurt us beyond that. The Lord had been our shade upon our right hand, to keep us from “the arrow” of its rays; and we are His witnesses that “He is good,” and that “His mercy endureth forever.”
Nor can I leave this portion of my narrative without making mention of the supernatural power of endurance given to Miss Gates, and recording my deep sense of indebtedness to her, who, for over three hours, stood under that fierce blaze of heat covering my wife and children, in a ministry of self-sacrificing devotion which I can never forget, and the memory of which will ever remain with me as one of the noblest deeds of Christian heroism I have ever been privileged to witness. No words of mine can convey any adequate conception, I think, of what our actual experience was. I feel I can only say, as I look back upon it, “What hath God wrought!” It was indeed true of us in that hallowed mountain top— “We had the sentence of death in ourselves.” But it was all to the end “that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead, Who delivered us from so great a death.” Certain it is that “the excellency of the power” that brought us out alive, or that enabled us to endure what we did, was “not of ourselves, but of God,” and God alone. And when we left the hill, it was with the consciousness that there we had “seen the Lord.”
“I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to usward.” As we laid us down—spent with long hours of watching and fasting, the hope of that glory was bright in our hearts. For, with a longing begotten of our experience, we looked on to the day when the redeemed “shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall feed them, and shall guide them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”